An asteroid colony has been struck by a meteor, and the CRAY-5 supercomputer
which controls the colony's atmosphere has been damaged. The only way to save
the colony is to activate thirteen interrupters scattered around nine zones of
the complex within a time limit. You will need to collect keys in order to
unlock doors within the complex; however, there are three types of door, and
only the correct type of key will unlock them. Other hazards include magnets,
spikes and walls marked with a skull and crossbones symbol, all of which drain
your energy if you touch them. The graphics and music are both rather basic, but everything
is recognisable. The main problem is that you will often have to fly through
some very narrow passages, and it's almost impossible to avoid contact with
aliens or the aforementioned energy-sapping walls, which makes it extremely
difficult to make much progress in the game.

It's another of those races where you're driving along roads and have to reach
the next checkpoint before your time runs out. Here, each level is divided into
stages, and your car metamorphoses into a better and faster one when you reach
the next level – nice. However, there are hardly any other cars on the track,
which is mysterious; most of the time, you're driving down empty roads, and
boredom sets in quickly as a result. There isn't even any scenery to make things
a bit more interesting! The sound isn't up to much as well, and this is quite a
lousy game.

You're in a Ferrari F40 and are trying to smash a racket which is being run by
some corrupt policemen. You have to race your car around four American states –
Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico – and reach several destinations within
the time limit. The police are on the loose, though! This game is much
better than the original Crazy Cars, with excellent graphics and great
Doppler effects when you're approaching police cars. There's also some really
groovy digitised music to listen to on the title screen if you're playing the
disc version of the game! The noise of your engine is OK, too, and it's a nice
game with a lot of map-reading required. As for the
cartridge
version, the only differences in the graphics are that the sky looks nicer,
and the instrument panel is brown instead of grey – although the map is built
into the game and can be accessed at any time.

In this episode of the Crazy Cars series, you race in your Lamborghini aiming
to reach the top of the first division. The routes you race along are Memphis,
Denver, Miami, Boston, Houston and Mojave. There is an entry fee for each race,
and you can also gamble on who will win. Cash is needed to repair your car and
buy upgrades. Graphically, this game is very attractive with well drawn screens,
good use of colour, and character portraits. The only problem lies in the frame
rate which results in a visually jumpy race. It's still playable, though, and
deserves a few goes.

I loved playing crazy golf when I was young, but this version of the game is
staggeringly bad. It's written in BASIC for a start, and each of the 18 holes
is drawn entirely using lines. It looks extremely ugly and amateurish, and even
more so thanks to the horrible colour schemes that are used. Aiming the ball is
a bit difficult, and achieving par or under will take a lot of practice – and no
doubt a lot of frustration as well. However, the game is so awful that most
players will play one round and switch off. The fact that it was released very
early in the CPC's life is no excuse for such an abysmal game.

Do you remember those funfair stalls where you have to shoot at various targets
and win prizes depending on how many points you score? This offering consists of
five target shooting games – Jungle Adventure, Junior Hunter, Magic Balloons,
Smoker Nightmare, and Special Police. Each game has its own slightly different
set of rules, and if you run out of time or bullets, the game is over. Although
you can play the game with a joystick, it is more fun if you use Loriciel's
Westphaser lightgun, for which the game is designed. The graphics are gorgeous,
but if you only have a joystick, it's a little bit too easy and becomes
uninteresting in the long term.

The English cricket team are on their way to a Caribbean island to play a
cricket match against the island's team. However, although the players don't
know it, there is another important reason why the match is being played. The
island is rich in a natural resource called guano, and the British government
wants to grab some of it. But the problems for the team begin when their plane
is hijacked, and things only get worse... This is a text adventure in two parts.
In the first part, you must find the team's hotel and prepare for the match,
while in the second part, you play the match – which is quite a strange
experience considering it's all done in the style of a text adventure! The game
has been written using GAC, but the parser's limited abilities once again
make this a frustrating adventure to play.

There was something unusual about that door, and when Cris approached it, a
strange force pulled her through it, and she found herself in a bizarre world.
Why is there a book floating in the air, and how can she reach it? As Cris, you
must explore this world. The first thing that strikes you is the graphics; they
are some of the most beautiful to grace the CPC, and the animation of Cris and
the enemies is reminiscent of Prince of Persia. The music is very
atmospheric and suits the dream-like nature of the world you have to explore.
With this amount of detail, the game itself is quite small, and it shouldn't
take long for most players to complete it. It was an entrant in the 2017
#CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest and finished in a well deserved fourth place.
There are a few glitches in the collision detection and the screen can become
slightly corrupted, but this is still a great game despite these flaws.

Aliens have invaded a colony within the Terra Federation, and they intend to
blow up the anti-matter conversion plant and create a black hole that will
destroy the entire planetary system. You have been chosen to confront the aliens
and shut down the plant before it reaches critical mass. This shoot-'em-up,
which was first released for the CPC on Durell's Big 4 compilation, sees
you piloting a spacecraft across five zones, avoiding rocks, mines and aliens.
Contact with these will drain your energy, and if you run out of energy, your
spacecraft explodes spectacularly into dozens of tiny pieces (an amusing effect
that is well worth seeing) and you must find another one. The graphics are
sparse and Spectrum-like, but the game itself is challenging and fun to play
once you get the hang of manoeuvring the spacecraft.

As a new recruit to the Chicago police force, you've been assigned the task of
clearing the city of gangsters. On each of the eight levels, you must shoot the
gangsters while avoiding the civilians, for which points will be deducted. The
graphics are pretty simple and so are the sound effects, and it is one of the
easiest games I've ever played – I really did complete it on my first go! Still,
if you're after a quick blast, you could do worse than this one.